THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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the stormy Atlantic, see them set foot upon the frozen shores of Massachusetts, we know that this resolute deed is no fanatical impulse of the hour, but is a deed born of the spirit of the age. From these two migrations sprang our ancestry; and to follow the development of American literature is to follow the East and South in the develop­ment of each in almost separate lines for nearly three centuries; and to account for the marked difference is not to attribute it to climate, as many have done, but to ancestry. Virginia was not settled, as some claim, by worthless, broken-down gentry, nor Massachusetts by blind fanatics. Bad men came over with all the colonists; but the ancestors of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry and Henry Clay could not have been entirely worthless, and neither could the ancestors of Franklin, Irving and Hawthorne have all been narrow fanatics. Yet there was a difference of character and purpose in the early colonists, the influence of which tells as greatly upon the sections of our country as do the character and purpose of the Scotch and English upon the sections of Great Britain. The Puritans, Quakers, Walloons, Salzburgers and Baptists were all dissenters, descendants of the Roundheads, the Luthers and Calvins of the Old World. They came to America as Moses went to Judea, dissatis­fied with the church, the government and all the institutions of the Mother Country. They came to establish for themselves a new church and a new government. The Cavaliers came to America as men go West today, in order to better their fortunes. They came with hearts loyal to the Mother Country, with the intention of perpetuat­ing her institutions, socially, politically and spiritually. The Dissenters settled north, and the Cavaliers settled south, and the influence of the two originated the differences in thought that have been evidenced in our speech and literature.

Colonial literature can hardly be called American, and even if it were so counted, it could not be called literature, for dry chronicles help to make history but not litera­ture. Our colonial ancestors were too busy providing for the material necessities of their new life to find time for extensive reading or writing. White, in his “Philosophy of American Literature,” says that the ideal of the Southerner was ever on a lower plane than that of the Northerner. Strange that a man should say this when a South­erner is called by his people, “ the father of his country;” when a Southerner wrote the Declaration of Independence; when a Southerner is called “the father of the Con­stitution.” He also speaks of the dearth of authors in the South.

The value of literature is determined by its quality and not by its quantity, and when we subtract the worthless, the histories and text-books from the authorship of the north, but few authors would be left of which she could boast.

The Puritan life was idealistic, and it was natural that it should develop writers. The Southerner was a man of deeds, developed the statesman, warrior, the orator and the colonizer of America. The one was as necessary to the building up of a nation as the other, and while we accord to the North the majority of authors, let it not be done to the disparagement of the South, which has contributed in other ways just as honorable and necessary as the contributions of the North.

New England established the first college, Virginia the first university and Georgia the first female college. The broad university training of the South has told upon the culture of her people, and the narrow intense, college training of the North told upon her Cotton Mathers and Edwards.

The Puritan spirit of New England developed theologians, psychologists and melancholy poets. Her narrow training has given us our text-book literature. The Cotton Mathers, Hopkins, Emersons, Dwights, Bradfords, Bradstreets, Edwards and Hookers have given us the greatest divines and metaphysical authors of America.

When man becomes extreme in thought, his extremity is God’s opportunity, and out of the extreme Puritanism of Wigglesworth and John Cotton was evolved Ben­jamin Franklin, who was really the first man to show that the old life had done its work, that the persecutions and bigotry of the fathers had reacted in the broad spirit* of a new man in a new world. Benjamin Franklin, the printer, lightning-rod man, stove man, newspaper man, author, statesman and diplomat, an all-around Yankee, a